The bottom line is clear: Our vital interests in Afghanistan are limited and military victory is not the key to achieving them. On the contrary, waging a lengthy counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan may well do more to aid Taliban recruiting than to dismantle the group, help spread conflict further into Pakistan, unify radical groups that might otherwise be quarreling amongst themselves, threaten the long-term health of the U.S. economy, and prevent the U.S. government from turning its full attention to other pressing problems. -- Afghanistan Study Group

Friday, November 25, 2016

As I suggested recently, the Iraq theater is not separable from Syria and I will have to start paying attention to events there. (The border is artificial anyway.) A member of the U.S. military has been killed by an explosion near Ayn Issa, Syria. No further details as of now. (The town is just north of Raqqa, the IS capital, deep inside Syria, indicating that U.S. forces are deployed within the combat zone.)

I have so far resisted covering incidents outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, simply because mission creep could end up overwhelming me. However, the theater is wider of course, and Syria is an integral part of the same war that is happening in Iraq. U.S. troops are stationed around the regionin support of the effort, including in Jordan. Three American soldiers were killed in Jordan earlier this month. At the time, Jordanian authorities claimed that they had failed to stop at a checkpoint entering the military base where they were stationed. However, it now appears they were murdered. The shooter, a Jordanian soldier, is in a medically induced coma and has not been questioned.

A special report from Reuters says IS leadership in Mosul is succumbing to paranoia which is weakening their effectiveness. (I'm not sure if it's really paranoia, apparently the city really is full of informants who are in contact with coalition forces and has faced one or more coup plots.) They have banned possession of SIM cards and executed dozens of real or suspected spies. Baghdadi is said to be in the city, moving around constantly.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Editor's Note: During the campaign, Donald Trump made vague claims about his likely policy in Iraq and Syria. He claimed repeatedly that the battle for Mosul was a "disaster," and that he has a secret plan to destroy IS. He did talk about "bombing the shit" out of them and propose torturing captives and murdering the families of suspected terrorists. He did condemn U.S. support for opposition forces in Syria and apparently wants to ally with Russia and Russian objectives in the fight against IS in Russia, which would mean restoring the Assad government's rule over the relevant territory. He also at times disparaged the U.S. alliance with the Iraqi government, which he claims is a stooge of Iran. There is no telling what the Trump administration will actually do once he takes office, since he clearly has no idea what he is talking about. In any event, the battle for Mosul is likely to be over or nearly over by then.

Reading through the United States military and court documents outlining
the allegations and evidence against these eight men, one enters a
Kafkaesque world
of strange, vague accusations, rife with hearsay, secret evidence, bad
translations, gross errors of fact and testimony obtained under duress
and torture. . . .

AAN senior analyst, Kate Clark, investigated the Afghan experience in
Guantanamo and found the Afghan case files full of mistakes, bad
translations and fantastical allegations, and evidence made up of
hearsay, double hearsay, unsubstantiated intelligence reports and
testimony from those who were tortured.

Notably, though, this is not the first time that Trump and ISIS have seen eye to eye. Indeed, over the last year in particular, his rhetoric has persistently reflected that of the ISIS propagandists,
especially when it came to issues pertaining to Islam and the West.
It's in this context that the similarities are most striking: when
Trump says "I think Islam hates us," ISIS is there to back him up as evidence, declaring that "we [and the religion of Islam that ISIS falsely claims to represent] hate you." At times, it is almost uncanny how
closely each affirms the other's worldview. However, this is not because
their ideological positions actually resemble each other, and it is
certainly not because an active relationship exists between the two. Not
by any stretch of the imagination could that be the case.

Rather, this strange symbiosis is just indicative of the fact that opposing extremisms sometimes work in each other's favor: the fear that drives Trump's anti-Muslim populism,
in a not-so-roundabout way, fuels the fires of ISIS' global jihadist
project. While their goals are poles apart, each appeals to their
supporters by stoking fears of the "other." So, when ISIS says the West
hates Muslims and Trump says Muslims hate the West, they end up
reinforcing and reaffirming the other's system of beliefs.